Obsolescence
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See Also Product Life Cycles
This Web site includes references to items no longer in current production. We provide information on these products as a service to customers who own them. Our price list includes most items in current production and also states,
To Owners of Unlisted Products
This price list includes only items in current production. Some of our customers - like you, maybe - build our products into long-life capital equipment and, from time to time, need to buy drop-in replacements1. We take our responsibility to you very seriously, and, if you cannot find an older product that you need on this price list, we almost certainly can make it for you at a reasonable price if our suppliers still can provide us with the required components. Please call us for more information.
When suppliers still can provide us with components required for older products, what they charge for them may differ from what they charged in the past. Whatever the cost of components, however, it does cost us more to make items no longer in current production, so we have to charge a premium for these products to reflect that.
Our focus on product development lets you implement new systems more effectively and at less cost with items in current production than with older products, even at prices before any premium on these products. If a third party provided you with an earlier system based on older products, you may want to continue to rely on that third party for new systems based on items in current production. If you do not have a relationship with a suitable third-party and you do not want to develop a new system yourself, you can have us do that for you.
Maintaining existing systems remains an issue. We address this as well as anyone can, as set out in the above statement to owners of unlisted products. Some things no one can control, however: required components may disappear from the marketplace; PC-based elements in a system may fail and may have no exact replacement. Sometimes you can maintain the functions of a system only by developing a new one. Again, you can ask us to do that for you.
Note that Microsoft and Intel have their own legacy policies that affect Microstar Laboratories systems. We classify all of our ISA products as "Obsolete" due to these policies. See Intel's discussion of legacy removal or Microsoft's design guidelines.
Sometimes an improved-performance model of a product can function as a drop-in replacement for an earlier model at no increase in price. In that case, we no longer include the earlier model on the price list, but we continue to provide owners of the earlier model the spin-off benefit of ongoing engineering work on the newer model whenever we can. In other words, we try to support the superseded model as one still in the active or mature phase of its product life cycle for as long as we include the newer model in the price list.